Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

How does a "white elephant" relate to the "operation"?

In the story Hills Like White Elephants. Could it be her changing opinion? Because in the beggining she sates that they look like white elephants and later realized they're not, then she chooses to not have the operation when she was going to have it in the beggining.

Asked by
deissy j #340215
on 2/20/2015 1:21 AM

Last updated by
jill d #170087
on 2/20/2015 2:06 AM

Answers
1

In my opinion Jig never wanted the operation, she was only going along with it because the American wanted her to, and she also understood that to have the abortion would serve to change the realtionship even more than it had already changed with the pregnancy. None-the-less, the title of the story has led many to speculate on what the “white elephant” symbolizes for the couple. A white elephant is generally thought of as unusual and cumbersome, in short, a problem. Various theories exist. The white elephant could be the pregnancy, the baby itself, the abortion, Jig’s reluctance to get the abortion, the American’s insistence that Jig abort, Jig herself and the American himself. The most popular choices among scholars are that the white elephant is the baby/pregnancy (the obvious choice) and the American himself, given his bullying of Jig.